The Safest Cities in America for Trick-or-Treating in 2026

What Cities Are Safest For Halloween Trick-or-Treating?

According to the latest FBI data release, violent crime fell 9.3 percent, and property crime dropped 12.4 percent from 2024 to 2025. While this is great news for families, safety conditions vary widely by city. The tables below show the 25 highest-ranked cities for trick-or-treating safety and the factors included in their safety scores.

Top 25 Safest Cities for Trick-or-Treating

Source: SafeHome.org analysis of 2025 FBI crime and law enforcement data, 2024 NHTSA pedestrian-fatality data, and 2026 City-Data registered sex-offender data.

These 25 cities ranked highest after we applied a thorough scoring system. To normalize scores across cities of different sizes, we standardized each metric per 10,000 residents. To score these cities across America, we evaluated five key safety factors, weighted according to their importance for secure trick-or-treating:

A few regional patterns stand out at the top of the ranking:

• The Dallas–Fort Worth area had five cities in the top 25 safest: Frisco, Plano, McKinney, Garland, and Denton.
• Three Phoenix-area cities made the top 10: Chandler, Gilbert, and Surprise.
• The New York City area had three representatives in the top 25: Yonkers, New York City itself, and Jersey City.
• California had six cities in the top 25: Irvine, Elk Grove, Glendale, Roseville, Fremont, and Huntington Beach.
• Southern Florida claimed two of the top four positions, with Pembroke Pines at No. 1 and Port St. Lucie at No. 4.

A full breakdown of crime and safety data and scores for each city in our analysis is available in the data appendix here.

Breaking Down the Safest Cities for Trick-or-Treating

1. Pembroke Pines, Florida

• Law enforcement employees per 10,000: 21.3
• Registered sex offenders per 10,000: 1.5
• Violent crimes per 10,000: 4.2
• Property crimes per 10,000: 67.9
• Pedestrian fatalities per 10,000: 0.1
• Halloween safety score: 99

Pembroke Pines earned the top spot with a safety score of 99. Its violent-crime rate, 4.2 incidents per 10,000 residents, was the lowest among all 152 cities in the study. The South Florida suburb also had low property crime and registered sex-offender rates. Its family focus extends beyond the numbers: the city operates its own charter school system and offers a broad network of recreation and cultural facilities.

2. Yonkers, New York

• Law enforcement employees per 10,000: 33.6
• Registered sex offenders per 10,000: 5.7
• Violent crimes per 10,000: 26.1
• Property crimes per 10,000: 86.2
• Pedestrian fatalities per 10,000: 0.1
• Halloween safety score: 98

Yonkers followed closely with a score of 98. Bordering the Bronx, the city blends urban blocks and suburban neighborhoods, a mix that has earned it the informal nickname of New York City's “sixth borough.” Families also have access to cultural draws like the Hudson River Museum, which includes a planetarium and hands-on science exhibits, alongside the strong law enforcement staffing that helped push Yonkers to the No. 2 spot overall.

3. Frisco, Texas

• Law enforcement employees per 10,000: 15.9
• Registered sex offenders per 10,000: 1.5
• Violent crimes per 10,000: 9.3
• Property crimes per 10,000: 78.5
• Pedestrian fatalities per 10,000: 0.0
• Halloween safety score: 98

Frisco ranked third and led a strong showing from the Dallas–Fort Worth area. It recorded no pedestrian fatalities in the year analyzed, one of the lowest registered sex-offender rates, and a single-digit violent-crime rate. The fast-growing suburb has built a reputation for family life that goes beyond the crime data, too: Fortune ranked Frisco the 13th best place in the U.S. to raise a family, and Frisco Independent School District has an A+ grade, ranking among the top school districts in Texas.

4. Port St. Lucie, Florida

• Law enforcement employees per 10,000: 15.4
• Registered sex offenders per 10,000: 6.3
• Violent crimes per 10,000: 12.8
• Property crimes per 10,000: 62.5
• Pedestrian fatalities per 10,000: 0.0
• Halloween safety score: 97

The growing Treasure Coast community of Port St. Lucie earned a trick-or-treating safety score of 97. There were no pedestrian fatalities in the year we analyzed, and the city had just 62.5 property crimes per 10,000 residents, the lowest rate among the top five cities.

5. Chandler, Arizona

• Law enforcement employees per 10,000: 18.4
• Registered sex offenders per 10,000: 5.4
• Violent crimes per 10,000: 12.3
• Property crimes per 10,000: 121.9
• Pedestrian fatalities per 10,000: 0.0
• Halloween safety score: 96

Chandler rounded out the top five with a safety score of 96. The Phoenix suburb recorded 12.3 violent crimes and fewer than 0.1 pedestrian fatalities per 10,000 residents. Its schools stand out alongside its low crime rates: Chandler Unified School District is one of Arizona's top school districts, a distinction that has helped draw families to the fast-growing suburb.

The 10 Least Safe Cities for Trick-or-Treating

While the following cities aren’t inherently or constantly unsafe, their low scores reflect higher rates of crime, pedestrian fatalities, or registered sex offenders than most of their peers in this study. And because these are citywide rankings, conditions can still vary significantly from one neighborhood to the next.

Source: SafeHome.org analysis of 2024 FBI crime and law enforcement data, 2024 NHTSA pedestrian-fatality data, and 2026 City-Data registered sex-offender data.

Memphis landed at the very bottom of the list with a score of 50. Its violent crime rate was the highest of any city in the study, and its property-crime rate wasn't far behind, at nearly 500 incidents per 10,000 residents. But no two cities chalked low scores for quite the same reason. Oakland's downfall was property crime: the California city had the highest rate anywhere in the analysis. Detroit had the second-highest violent-crime rate in the study, and even its unusually large police force couldn't offset it.

Salt Lake City, meanwhile, didn't report a single pedestrian fatality, yet still landed near the bottom due to steep property crime and sex offender rates. Finally, in St. Louis, Little Rock, Albuquerque, and Tacoma, pedestrian fatalities brought down safety scores: each recorded at least 0.7 per 10,000 residents, among the highest rates anywhere in the rankings.

Safety Tips for Trick-or-Treating

No matter where you live, here are a few ways to keep your kids safe on October 31. Here are our recommendations to make this Halloween your family’s safest one yet:

1. Stick to well-lit, walkable areas.
   When deciding where to go trick-or-treating, consider places with streetlights and sidewalks. You can always visit nearby communities if your own neighborhood doesn’t have lights or paths. Well-lit streets make it easier for drivers to see pedestrians and for parents to keep a watchful eye on their kids, and sidewalks make it much easier to stay out of traffic. You can also opt for “trunk-or-treat” style events, where everyone’s cars remain parked in place while kids exchange candy.
2. Wear reflective gear or add glow sticks.
   Dark costumes are spooky, but they can make kids hard for drivers to see at night. Add reflective tape, flashlights, glow sticks, or LED lights to costumes and candy bags so drivers and other trick-or-treaters can spot them easily. Bonus points if they coordinate with your costume (think construction workers or firefighters wearing reflective gear or glow-in-the-dark skeletons).
3. Travel in groups with an adult.
   Remember, there is safety in numbers. Big kids should always trick-or-treat in groups, and younger kids should have a responsible adult with them. Before heading out for the night, set some ground rules with your children, reminding them to stick close to mom or dad and keep an eye out for younger siblings.
4. Cross streets carefully.
   Halloween is one of the busiest nights of the year for pedestrian accidents. To reduce your risk of accidents, remind kids to cross streets safely: look both ways before crossing, cross only at designated crosswalks and never between parked cars, and always make eye contact with drivers before stepping into the street.

Methodology

This study ranks 152 of the largest U.S. cities by their relative safety for children and families trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Only cities with complete data from each source below were included in the rankings. The analysis integrates crime, traffic safety, and public safety resources into a composite safety score, ensuring standardized comparisons across cities of varying size.

The primary data sources were:

• FBI's Crime in the United States (CIUS) estimates from 2025, the latest year available. In particular, we examined Table 8, Offenses Known to Law Enforcement by city, to determine violent and property crime rates
• FBI’s 2025 Law Enforcement Employees data from the Uniform Crime Reporting Program
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's 2024 Fatality Analysis Reporting System for pedestrian fatalities
• City-Data's 2026 city-level registered sex-offender counts

To ensure comparability, we converted all raw counts into per-capita rates per 10,000 residents. We standardized each per-capita measure using z-scores, which express values in standard deviations from the mean across all 160 cities. Negative indicators (crime, pedestrian deaths, sex offenders) were inverted so that higher standardized values reflected safer outcomes, while positive indicators (law enforcement employees per capita) were retained as-is. The index assigns the greatest weight to violent crime (30%) because of its direct relevance to personal safety. Property crime received a lower weight (15%), reflecting its lesser connection to trick-or-treat activities. Pedestrian fatalities and the prevalence of registered sex offenders were each weighted at 20%, as both directly impact child safety in residential environments. Law enforcement staffing per capita was weighted at 15% as a measure of safety infrastructure and public protection capacity.

These components were combined into a weighted composite score and rescaled to a 0–100 index for interpretability. Higher scores represent safer environments for trick-or-treating. Cities were then ranked from highest to lowest, providing a relative comparison of trick-or-treat safety across the U.S. The final results balance statistical rigor, contextual relevance, and public transparency, while allowing readers the flexibility to consider walkability as an independent factor in their decision-making.

Data Appendix: Complete Halloween Safety Rankings

Curious how your own city stacked up, even if it didn't crack the top or bottom lists above? The table below contains the full results for all 152 cities included in the study.